I blink. “Yes.”

“Komayd?” the Fisherman calls, wanting to know what the Lady of Letters thinks, but Tamar whispers to her that Lady Komayd is already marking spots on the maps to show where the Tiger’s dens lie throughout the city.

“How will we know the Tiger has fallen?” Komayd asks, looking up at me.

“The voice of Mor will speak, of course,” the Fisherman answers with a laugh, reading my mind.

31

The Dead Lord’s Word

When the Lords have gone, I set off after Orso. He knows I am coming and turns to greet me with a grim look.

“Cat,” he says.

“I want to know why you are reneging on your word,” I say, sounding more accusatory than I should.

“I did not give the students my word. No bone oath was sworn to them.”

“You found St. Juste, you put the fire in his eyes and his heart, you set him upon this path. Do not tell me that it isn’t so.”

“He has his uncle’s heart. He would always have—”

“He was standing in the public places and giving revolutionary speeches under the name of St. Juste! It is a miracle that he managed to survive as long as he did. He would have been hanged his first month in the city if you had not taken him under your wing. How can you abandon him now?”

Orso steps away from me, trying to deny it.

“I have been among them, Orso. I know what you did. I know that you showed him how to recruit brethren, how to plan, and what to watch for. There are twenty cells like his across this city. Without our aid they will all be slaughtered.”

“And what is the slaughter of Those Who Walk by Day to you?” he asks gruffly, his eyebrows raised.

“I need him,” I mumble, flushing for reasons unknown. “I need them to help me overwhelm the Tiger’s Guild. I cannot use any children of the Court to enter the Tiger’s house, for their mere presence might plunge their Guilds into war.” I swallow heavily. “But they will give me their aid only if they survive this uprising—an uprising you and Corday said you would support. That was the bargain we made. You and I both know that without your aid they have very little chance.”

“It is not the lack of my aid that will damn them,” Orso says stubbornly. “There is a traitor in the Société.”

“Do you know the identity of the traitor?”

“No. I have merely overheard conversations. Nonetheless, I will not give my children to a cause that is doomed,” Orso says.

“St. Juste does not believe it is doomed.”

“Then he is a fool, just as his uncle was before him.”

Rage rises in me. “St. Juste’s uncle was a martyr for this city and a brother to you … yet you dare to call him a fool? You, who were one of them, O tailless one, teller of truths, sixth little mouse of six.”